Lamborghini Iron Lynx wraps up 6 Hours of São Paulo race

Lamborghini Iron Lynx completed its maiden trip to Brazil today at Autódromo José Carlos Pace in Interlagos, sealing off a tricky run in Round 5 of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship. Despite showing promising pace in the middle part of the 6 Hours of São Paulo, the team was eventually put out of top 10 contention by a slow puncture with about two hours to go.  Starting from 18th after a challenging qualifying session, Daniil Kvyat had a tough time putting temperature into the Hard tyres in the opening stages. By moving to Medium rubber, he and the #63 Lamborghini SC63 LMDh came alive. Kvyat put up a spectacular recovery to the top 10 positions.

Taking over for the second stint, Edoardo Mortara made a stellar job managing older tyres throughout his driving time, and kept himself around the top 10. Unfortunately, right after Mirko Bortolotti jumped in with new Medium tyres, which would have propelled the team back into contention, a front-right puncture forced him to return to the pits, costing him time and the chance to push on a full new set.

Overall the weekend provided teams and drivers with changing conditions which included rain and cold weather. That made it even more difficult to adapt, yet the tough situations enabled the #63 crew to keep climbing the learning curve in the effort to widen the car's operational window. Under that point of view, the unique track and environment of Interlagos provided an invaluable learning opportunity. In addition, the passionate Brazilian fan support gave the team a further motivation boost for the rest of the season.   As it flies back to Italy, the team will continue working on the areas of interest as it approaches the next round expected to be in the searing Texan summer weather at Circuit of the Americas in late August.

Emmanuel Esnault, Racing Director: "We expected this to be an incredibly challenging race and it surely was. Still, we showed promising pace in multiple conditions and the team once again delivered on race day. Even though luck was not fully our side today, our drivers did an unbelievable job in adapting to the situations we had to face. True world-class talent. There is a lot to do for us in terms of development to take what we have learned and put it to work, especially in situations like qualifying. Another challenging race awaits us at Circuit of The Americas and we look forward to maximising our preparations, and continuing to improve every detail of our operations."

Daniil Kvyat: "Generally it was a positive race with a strong opening to it. We showed good pace at times, put ourselves in a strong position early on and we were really in the fight for that position until unfortunately, we had a puncture and got taken out of contention for the top 10. I enjoyed coming here, it’s a very cool and exciting track to drive and now we head for another interesting track at COTA."

Edoardo Mortara: "Difficult race weekend for us here in Interlagos. The track is quite good and the atmosphere was great, but it was very challenging in the race because everyone had to manage the degradation of the tyres quite a lot. This was the main challenge for this race. We were starting at the back but managed to come through the field quite nicely. For me, it was quite challenging having to make a double stint on the softer tyres, and that was especially difficult in the second part of my run. Nevertheless, we were looking actually quite promising, fighting around the top 10, with some chances to score some points. Unfortunately, we suffered a puncture and that was the end of our comeback. Next time it will be better and we will try to further improve the car to make it better at COTA."

Mirko Bortolotti: "I think it was quite a disappointing weekend to be honest, I'm not really happy with how things went, and the pace wasn't there as we saw in qualifying. This is the shortest track on the calendar so it is clear that the gaps are closer but clearly, we are not competitive. Of course, in the race, we played a little bit of a different strategy game which was great for us in the beginning but not great at the end and then the puncture didn't help. But I think it would have been tough to finish in the points anyway."